Field
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to tools to improve the quality and durability of citations used within research documents. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to techniques for providing managed document research domains.
Description of the Related Art
Many researchers and research institutions are moving to publishing original research and data as well as study/reference materials online. As a result, Internet search engines may be used to access a broad variety of original research. Because the Internet contains such vast amounts of information that may be searched quickly and efficiently, researchers and academics are using the Internet more and more to conduct their research.
Research results are frequently published in an electronic research document and contain citations to documents/data used by the researcher. Readers of the research document may use the citations to verify the accuracy of the results presented in a research document as well as to gain more information about the subject to which the citation pertains. Citations to documents in the electronic research document may themselves be references to documents accessible through a network such as the Internet (e.g., citations are frequently formatted as a simple http URL). However, while the Internet (and networks generally) provide a convenient means of storing and accessing electronic documents, the Internet is a fluid and changing environment. Remotely located electronic documents may be moved from one location on a web site to another or taken down, the server storing an electronic document may change addresses or crash, and the company or entity providing the electronic document may go out of business or close the web site containing the electronic document. Each situation may result in a temporary or permanent loss of the information being cited in a research document.
This is a problem for the continuing progress of medical and scientific research, because other researchers looking to recreate experiments, or expand on the research of others can no longer find the referenced materials. In addition to becoming unavailable, remotely located documents may be changed or updated by the author or administrator of the remote document. A researcher may create a research document which contains reasoning and conclusions drawn from a cited document. If the cited document is changed or updated, the reasoning and conclusions drawn from that document may become incorrect without the researcher's knowledge. Additionally, persons reading the research document, upon referring to the changed remote document, may think that the researcher has mischaracterized the cited document or drawn incorrect conclusions from the cited document, reflecting negatively upon both the research and the researcher. Further still, while the publishing and peer-review process has been indisputably successful, research is performed on a global scale, and frequently, one researcher may not even know who is working on the same or similar problems (possibly reaching conflicting results), let alone who may be relying on (or criticizing) their research.